During a [somewhat drunken] discussion last night, the topic of synchronization software reared its head and hissed at us.

So, I thought I'd inquire here as to what y'all consider to be best of breed.

Reason for the conversation was that a friend of mine has a sailing school, and he's looking for something other than a backup software, something that'll give him immediate recovery potential for day-to-day mistakes.

I use Syncless - in my startup group - on a daily basis for a number of note/history files, and I've used SyncToy, SyncbackSE, GoodSync, Sync Butler from time to time, but I'd like to be able to recommend to him some software or combination based on a bit more than my personal usages.

I also gave up on dedicated backup software some time ago, for 2 reasons - the main one being that none of them seemed able to cope with foreign characters (e.g. č, š, ž etc) in filenames, and would either fail completely or just pass over them and not back them up. The other reason is that they all seem to bypass empty folders. And the great thing about filesync apps is that they don't create their own format of back up... so you can use different ones without having to re-create your back ups.

Anyway, after trying several, I've settled on FreeFileSync. It's on version 5 and I like it a lot... it can seem very slow at times, but when I actually timed it against other sync apps, there didn't actually seem to be much difference.It's really easy to use; compares first and then shows you a list of pending changes, which can be kept or deselected as you please. It has various sync options... Mirror/Update/Auto/Custom, and an option for deleted files to go in the recycle bin, just in case. You can save jobs, can drag and drop folders onto it, and it can copy file permissions if you tell it to. Also it has a portable version.

Before FreeFileSync, I always used FileMenuTools which has a built in sync'er... excellent app overall but I stopped using it when I moved on to Windows 7.

Lastly you might like PureSync... I tried it and it seems very good, just a bit too heavyweight/over-complicated for my own needs.

Another vote here for FreeFileSync. I used Goodsync for awhile (until the company changed their policies), and before that Synctoy and a couple others, but FFS is simple and works really well. Can be run from a batch file too, and includes a realtime sync service that you can set up to sync whenever a folder changes.

Ah, as to that, well, we both consider that an occasional adult beverage (every fifteen (15) to twenty (20) minutes or so ) is both the lubricant and the progenitor of rational, reasonable, & intelligent conversation. The profundities that we approach late in the evening are amazing ! However, this was early on, so we were both still reasonably coherent .

He has a backup system in place, but had not encountered the concept of synchronization. Since the database machine is updated via sneaker net, e.g., a thumb drive, syncing software would make things a bit simpler while performing admin tasks (which he hates, btw .) Told him I'd check with some on line brains to see if there was something better than what I was using. Since he's teaching this week - hands on, on-the-bay, overnight anchorages, sleep on the boat, lessons - I still have a couple of days to reach a decide. As mentioned, I'm partial to Syncless, but concensus here (can two (2) references be called a concensus ?) seems to be FreeFileSync.

That's one (1) that I've overlooked, methinks. I thought it was a backup software, and my sailing buddy doesn't want to change his backup system. However, when I followed your link, I saw that it does seem to have replication capabilities as well. The important thing there will be whether we can pick the files to be replicated, not just the directories. I'll give it a try in the next day or two (2).

I thimk we've run USBDLM on his system. That or something pretty close to it.

Yeah, SyncBackSE has been a mainstay (for me) for years, but it's a bit of a pain to set up in sync mode, at least for what we want to accomplish.

As mentioned, I'm partial to Syncless, but it's all directory level. We're only looking at a few files, although that could grow a bit. Part of the problem here is reactionary - meaning him . He insists upon a duplicate menu system for his site, one (1) hardcoded into index.php, the other as an include for other pages, because he's heard somewhere that Google doesn't always read includes. So I have to cater, in part, to his attitudes - hey, sync a whole directory when only two (2) files have changed? - regardless my opinion .